The present invention relates generally to the field of transferring data between computer peripherals, and more particularly to transferring the data content of a first data storage cartridge of a first data storage library to a second data storage library.
With the ever-growing storage capacities of modern data storage systems, data analysis applications are required to analyze large data repositories provided by these systems. In order to further enlarge the storage capacity, modern data storage systems rely on distributed infrastructures such as cloud infrastructures. These systems include large numbers of storage units such as storage libraries, each library including large numbers of storage media. For example, the storage capacity provided by magnetic tape libraries may range from terabytes up to exabytes of data. A respective magnetic tape library may include thousands of magnetic tapes packaged in cartridges. In order to be able to perform data analysis tasks for these distributed systems, data analysis applications may require access for a short period of time to data stored on storage locations distributed over multiple libraries.
For this type of data analysis, there is a need for high-performance access to data stored on magnetic tapes in multiple magnetic tape libraries. In addition, host applications that commonly use magnetic tape libraries expect to be able to move any magnetic tape cartridge to any magnetic tape drive in the library. As libraries increase in size, to handle the very large data demands of cloud computing, among other things, they may become difficult to manage. For example, the space available in a data center for installing a new library or expanding an existing library may be limited due to other equipment installed nearby, or the presence of walls, columns, air conditioning systems, etc. This has created the need for installing multiple independent library systems and mechanically connecting them such that cartridges can pass from one library to another, thereby creating a very large library from multiple smaller libraries.
For transferring data between magnetic tape libraries, mechanical pass-through connections are known from the prior art. These mechanical pass-through connections are provided, for example, by automated electromechanical transportation tunnel systems extending between the magnetic tape libraries, and mechanically transporting magnetic tape cartridges from one magnetic tape library to another.
However, known mechanical transport systems may have the following disadvantages: mechanical wear of individual components of the transport system; mechanical defects with the risk of a blocking of the transportation tunnel due to cartridges stuck therein; high workload and costs due to the requirement of manually building up the mechanical systems and performing alignment maintenance work; the requirement of providing magnetic tape libraries at the same location, e.g., next to each other within a data center, in order to be able to provide reliable mechanical transport connections; the requirement to use the same and/or compatible magnetic tape library type and magnetic tape technology, e.g., LTO (linear tape-open), in order to ensure usability of exported magnetic tape cartridges by the target libraries; limited flexibility and scalability of the mechanical infrastructure; loss of exported magnetic tape cartridges by the source, i.e., these losses need to be compensated by importing new magnetic tape cartridges in order to maintain the storage capacity of the source library; and limited storage capacity for storing imported magnetic tape cartridges by the target library.